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Top 20 Catherine Drinker Bowen Quotes (2025 Update)

Catherine Drinker Bowen Quote: “Chamber music – a conversation between friends.”

1. “Chamber music – a conversation between friends.”

— Catherine Drinker Bowen

Catherine Drinker Bowen Quote: “Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind.”

2. “Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind.”

— Catherine Drinker Bowen

Catherine Drinker Bowen Quote: “What pioneer ever had chart and a lighthouse to steer by?”

3. “What pioneer ever had chart and a lighthouse to steer by?”

— Catherine Drinker Bowen

Catherine Drinker Bowen Quote: “In writing biography, fact and fiction shouldn’t be mixed. And if they are, the fictional points should be printed in red ink, the facts printed in black ink.”

4. “In writing biography, fact and fiction shouldn’t be mixed. And if they are, the fictional points should be printed in red ink, the facts printed in black ink.”

— Catherine Drinker Bowen

Catherine Drinker Bowen Quote: “History is, in its essence, exciting; to present it as dull is, to my mind, stark and unforgivable misrepresentation.”

5. “History is, in its essence, exciting; to present it as dull is, to my mind, stark and unforgivable misrepresentation.”

— Catherine Drinker Bowen

Catherine Drinker Bowen Quote: “Many a man who has known himself at ten forgets himself utterly between ten and thirty.”

6. “Many a man who has known himself at ten forgets himself utterly between ten and thirty.”

— Catherine Drinker Bowen

Catherine Drinker Bowen Quote: “For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word.”

7. “For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word.”

— Catherine Drinker Bowen

Catherine Drinker Bowen Quote: “If art has a purpose, it is to interpret life, reproduce it in fresh visions.”

8. “If art has a purpose, it is to interpret life, reproduce it in fresh visions.”

— Catherine Drinker Bowen

Catherine Drinker Bowen Quote: “What the writer needs is an empty day ahead.”

9. “What the writer needs is an empty day ahead.”

— Catherine Drinker Bowen

Catherine Drinker Bowen Quote: “Writers seldom choose as friends those self-contained characters who are never in trouble, never unhappy or ill, never make mistakes, and always count their change when it is handed to them.”

10. “Writers seldom choose as friends those self-contained characters who are never in trouble, never unhappy or ill, never make mistakes, and always count their change when it is handed to them.”

— Catherine Drinker Bowen

Catherine Drinker Bowen Quote: “I have noted that, barring accidents, artists whose powers wear best and last longest are those who have trained themselves to work under adversity. Great artists treasure their time with a bitter and snarling miserliness.”

11. “I have noted that, barring accidents, artists whose powers wear best and last longest are those who have trained themselves to work under adversity. Great artists treasure their time with a bitter and snarling miserliness.”

— Catherine Drinker Bowen

Catherine Drinker Bowen Quote: “All the others arts are lonely. We paint alone – my picture, my interpretation of the sky. My poem, my novel. But in music – ensemble music, not soloism – we share. No altruism this, for we receive tenfold what we give.”

12. “All the others arts are lonely. We paint alone – my picture, my interpretation of the sky. My poem, my novel. But in music – ensemble music, not soloism – we share. No altruism this, for we receive tenfold what we give.”

— Catherine Drinker Bowen

Catherine Drinker Bowen Quote: “Great artists treasure their time with a bitter and snarling miserliness.”

13. “Great artists treasure their time with a bitter and snarling miserliness.”

— Catherine Drinker Bowen

Catherine Drinker Bowen Quote: “Writing is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living.”

14. “Writing is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living.”

— Catherine Drinker Bowen

Catherine Drinker Bowen Quote: “In early days, I tried not to give librarians any trouble, which was where I made my primary mistake. Librarians like to be given trouble; they exist for it, they are geared to it. For the location of a mislaid volume, an uncatalogued item, your good librarian has a ferret’s nose. Give her a scent and she jumps the leash, her eye bright with battle.”

15. “In early days, I tried not to give librarians any trouble, which was where I made my primary mistake. Librarians like to be given trouble; they exist for it, they are geared to it. For the location of a mislaid volume, an uncatalogued item, your good librarian has a ferret’s nose. Give her a scent and she jumps the leash, her eye bright with battle.”

— Catherine Drinker Bowen

Catherine Drinker Bowen Quote: “It is a great, a pleasant thing to have a friend with whom to walk, untroubled, through the woods, by the stream, saying nothing, at peace – the heart all clean and quiet and empty, ready for the spirit that may choose to be its guest.”

16. “It is a great, a pleasant thing to have a friend with whom to walk, untroubled, through the woods, by the stream, saying nothing, at peace – the heart all clean and quiet and empty, ready for the spirit that may choose to be its guest.”

— Catherine Drinker Bowen

Catherine Drinker Bowen Quote: “Artists often think they are going to die before their time. They seem to possess a heightened sense of the passing of the hours.”

17. “Artists often think they are going to die before their time. They seem to possess a heightened sense of the passing of the hours.”

— Catherine Drinker Bowen

Catherine Drinker Bowen Quote: “People who carry a musical soul about them are, I think, more receptive than others. They smile more readily. One feels in them a pleasant propensity toward the lesser sins, a pleasing readiness also to admit the possibility that on occasion they may be in the wrong – they may be mistaken.”

18. “People who carry a musical soul about them are, I think, more receptive than others. They smile more readily. One feels in them a pleasant propensity toward the lesser sins, a pleasing readiness also to admit the possibility that on occasion they may be in the wrong – they may be mistaken.”

— Catherine Drinker Bowen

Catherine Drinker Bowen Quote: “There is a marvelous turn and trick to British arrogance; its apparent unconsciousness makes it twice as effectual.”

19. “There is a marvelous turn and trick to British arrogance; its apparent unconsciousness makes it twice as effectual.”

— Catherine Drinker Bowen

Catherine Drinker Bowen Quote: “A woman’s biography – with about eight famous historical exceptions – so often turns out to be the story of a man and the woman who helped his career.”

20. “A woman’s biography – with about eight famous historical exceptions – so often turns out to be the story of a man and the woman who helped his career.”

— Catherine Drinker Bowen

Catherine Drinker Bowen Quote: “Biographers, by their very nature, want to know everything about everybody, dead or alive.”

21. “Biographers, by their very nature, want to know everything about everybody, dead or alive.”

— Catherine Drinker Bowen

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